All comments by Johnny Moronic.

This final lot of movies from Paul Cox are a little outside of his comfort zone. Movies are more about dealing with ageing while his final movie is about his own struggle with cancer. A wider range of actors while still casting a number of his usual actors. He also made an international film and made some movies in overseas locales like Belgium, France and India. Also he moved from filming in Melbourne and made a couple of movies in South Australia.

I've just rewatched all of the below movies in the last week bar Salvation which I only watched for the first time recently. Some I hadn't seen since I capped them over 10 years ago. All of the collages and videos below are not new and the sources are about the best available at the moment. The quality of the videos below are significantly better with the movies being made in the digital age so the videos below are either from DVD or even in HD.

Innocence

2000

The first of Cox's South Australian movies (although there are some scenes set at Flinders Street Station in Melbourne) also some scenes are shot in Belgium. The elderly Andreas (Charles 'Bud' Tingwell) decides to get in touch with his first love Claire (Julia Blake) just to see her and when they meet, the spark of 40 years previous is reignited and they fall in love again despite Claire being married to John (Terry Norris). Both are reborn and Claire doesn't even bother to hide it, telling her husband she's met with her ex and slept with him but he doesn't believe her and gets his doctor son (Robert Menzies) to check if she hasn't gone 'mad'. Then Andreas falls ill and is close to dying so Claire decides to leave her husband to spend his final days with Andreas which completely throws John who starts following her to see what she's doing. Very good movie about first love rekindled as last love although the ending is a bit hokey. Possibly his most well-known movie and it had a bit of international success.

There's a bit of nudity in this movie. Belgian actress Kristine Van Pellicom has a few decent nude scenes while Julia Blake shows some brief side-boob in a couple of scenes. Also Angela Noack shows some nudity playing a dead body that is being removed from a grave.

Kristin von Pellicom and Angela Noack film clip (see below)

Van Pellicom collages



Noack

 

Salvation

2008

Capped this movie recently which I thought was only a few months ago but it turns out that it was exactly a year ago. Where did the time go?

Basically it's the story of the husband (Bruce Myles) of a bossy spiritual healer (Wendy Hughes) who decides to go see a Russian sex worker (Natalia Novikova) to satisfy his sexual needs although their sessions are not really sexual. They form a relationship where he helps her get out of her abusive relationship with her pimp.

A fairly accessible movie for a Paul Cox movie although it is heavy-handed at times, one scene at a gallery is particularly egregious. It basically turns into a 'hooker with a heart of gold' story as both people end up helping one another.

There's some brief nudity from Natalia Novikova where she shows her breasts as she lays on a couch.

Natalia Novikova film clip (collages below)



 

Force of Destiny

2015

Final movie from Cox which mirrors his own personal struggles with cancer. An artist Robert (David Wenham) finds out that he has liver cancer and he's going to die if he doesn't get a transplant. Meanwhile, he strikes up a relationship with Maya (Shahana Goswami) who's own uncle is dying while forming closer relationships with his daughter Poppy (Hannah Fredericksen) and ex-wife (Jacqueline McKenzie).

Unusually heavy-handed from Cox who wants to make sure how hard going through cancer is with lingering shots of Robert and also other shots of people with their own struggles. The central relationship is where the movie is at it's best but it is paused for the final act as Maya goes back home to see her uncle as he gets a transplant. It's a worthy movie for its subject matter but not one of Cox's best.

There's some brief nudity from Indian actress Shahana Goswami who shows a breast as she lays with Robert on a beach.

Shahana Goswami film clip (see below)

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So that's all of the available feature films made by Australian auteur Paul Cox, 18 in all with 16 of them featuring nudity. I would love to get a hold of his impossible-to-find earlier movies, maybe they'll turn up somewhere in the future plus hopefully a bunch of his movies will get a wider digital release.

It's just good to finally finish watching all of his movies and putting a dent in what I have to see in regards to Australian movies. I'd been hoping to finish off capping Cox's collection of movies for a while and it also means a lot less movies I need to find/go through for the site. Personally, I'm surprised that I actually got it done in the time that I did and didn't get distracted by other things.